Case Study: Urban Outfitters achieves faster reporting and deeper customer insights with Fortra

Urban Outfitters Analyzes Customer Behavior with SEQUEL

Urban Outfitters, a lifestyle retailer with 130+ stores and several specialty brands, needed to turn large, diverse data sources into actionable customer insights for buyers and merchandisers. At headquarters, IT analyst Tom Gould faced the challenge of producing timely, accurate reports from Island Pacific and other systems without overloading programming resources, while also understanding complex behaviors like online-to-store returns.

Gould implemented SEQUEL (and SEQUEL ViewPoint) to generate SQL, build reusable report menus with run‑time prompts, and deliver Excel outputs by email. The approach sped report production, reduced development costs, and produced deeper analysis—such as direct return profitability—enabling better merchandising decisions and plans to extend SEQUEL to remote databases across platforms.

Urban Outfitters

Tom Gould

IT Business Analyst